Ken Marcus Studios wrote:
I guess it depends on how nice a guy you want to be.

KM

Agree. I pay talent all the time and tell them up front I'm also giving them their choice of 8-10 images. Now I've never had a model demand images and payment when she has contacted me for a shoot, but I would consider it as with any 'rate' to be negotiable. Everything has a value, just factor that into the final agreed compensation.

And Ken, love your work.

Bob

imcFOTO wrote:
That isn't the point though. In a trade shoot, I entirely agree that you should give copies of everything you edit - I always provide 20-30 full edits - usually at least half will be chosen by the model herself.

But if you always give away services for free - or in this case, pay someone and then give your work away, your skill is really not being valued (by yourself). If my work is so good that the model wants lots of edits - surely I should either being doing a trade, or getting a big discount.

I'm all in favor of the networking aspect and getting your photos seen - but if you ever want to be seen as a professional, you have to start by realizing that you don't do work for free.

THIS, RIGHT HERE.

aaron lassman wrote:
I did a search and didn't see anything in the archives.  I find it hard to believe this topic hasn't come up before... or perhaps i didn't use the correct search terms. Or, if my wife is correct, my "man eyes" failed me again.

Anyway... I am throwing this out there because i'm at odds with this particular subject and would like some different perspectives. I have been contacted from time to time by a model soliciting me to pay her for a shoot then provide her images for her portfolio, which i am loath to do.  But on the other hand, i have contacted models, paid them AND given them images.  Of course, i've had the odd model or two want 20 or 30 edited images after i've already paid and given them a few.

But i'm curious as to how others manage this.  And i would love to hear from a model's perspective as well...  When you pay a model for a shoot (solicited by either party), do you provide images? If so, how many? Do you put conditions on their usage?

I struggled with this on one of my early shoots. Then I realized that what I should be doing is making part of the terms of the shoot that the model put at least one photo from the shoot in her port.

If the model is recognizable, especially by other models, her use of your photo is very valuable to you as a stamp of approval.

aaron lassman wrote:
I did a search and didn't see anything in the archives.  I find it hard to believe this topic hasn't come up before... or perhaps i didn't use the correct search terms. Or, if my wife is correct, my "man eyes" failed me again.

Anyway... I am throwing this out there because i'm at odds with this particular subject and would like some different perspectives. I have been contacted from time to time by a model soliciting me to pay her for a shoot then provide her images for her portfolio, which i am loath to do.  But on the other hand, i have contacted models, paid them AND given them images.  Of course, i've had the odd model or two want 20 or 30 edited images after i've already paid and given them a few.

But i'm curious as to how others manage this.  And i would love to hear from a model's perspective as well...  When you pay a model for a shoot (solicited by either party), do you provide images? If so, how many? Do you put conditions on their usage?

To me it's all part of what we agree.  I usually give edited pictures and I also usually let the model pick which ones.  I do about 5 - 10 per 2-3 hour shoot, with multiple changes.  They ALL have my Logo which puts my name out there.  It's like a marketing cost and the model is happy as well.

In the end, though, If I pay then it's up to me, if she pays then, well there you go.  Again, it's all about the negotiation of the details of the shoot.

Kindest regards,
Edward

aaron lassman wrote:
I did a search and didn't see anything in the archives.  I find it hard to believe this topic hasn't come up before... or perhaps i didn't use the correct search terms. Or, if my wife is correct, my "man eyes" failed me again.

Anyway... I am throwing this out there because i'm at odds with this particular subject and would like some different perspectives. I have been contacted from time to time by a model soliciting me to pay her for a shoot then provide her images for her portfolio, which i am loath to do.  But on the other hand, i have contacted models, paid them AND given them images.  Of course, i've had the odd model or two want 20 or 30 edited images after i've already paid and given them a few.

But i'm curious as to how others manage this.  And i would love to hear from a model's perspective as well...  When you pay a model for a shoot (solicited by either party), do you provide images? If so, how many? Do you put conditions on their usage?

in the past doing trade i have committed to long full day shoots, provided styling make-up and literally bent over backwards for great images. only to be told at the end by the photographer - who i had worked with before and received a disc from said "oh what i do is i dont send discs anymore - expecting me to hunt down and find a posted image and 'copy/steel' it of his profile, these photos i have NO rights to and yet gave my time and efforts for
leaving me with nothing except coppied low res web images.

i also often find i might get few images from a photographer which is fine if i get then in hig res and edited but this is also not often the case-
naturally i rather be paid for my time.

when i am paid i don't mind , i always say i would love and appreciate an image or a few if the photographer is inclined- and in this case also am ok with them being water marked and web size- keeps my port up to date and mostly is just a keep sake of the shoot too. but i am never pushy on this and if a photographer pays me my rate they are not EXPECTED to provide me with photos, it is at their discretions
if i see an image from our shoot i love and want to use i ask the photographer if i could have a web image of it to used on my portfolio-

aaron lassman wrote:
I did a search and didn't see anything in the archives.  I find it hard to believe this topic hasn't come up before... or perhaps i didn't use the correct search terms. Or, if my wife is correct, my "man eyes" failed me again.

Anyway... I am throwing this out there because i'm at odds with this particular subject and would like some different perspectives. I have been contacted from time to time by a model soliciting me to pay her for a shoot then provide her images for her portfolio, which i am loath to do.  But on the other hand, i have contacted models, paid them AND given them images.  Of course, i've had the odd model or two want 20 or 30 edited images after i've already paid and given them a few.

But i'm curious as to how others manage this.  And i would love to hear from a model's perspective as well...  When you pay a model for a shoot (solicited by either party), do you provide images? If so, how many? Do you put conditions on their usage?

Here's another way to look at it. In five years, no one is going to license photos any more. There will be 500 billion photos added to Flickr by then and people already claim everything has been done.

What you'll be licensing is your following. Better to make sure shes posting your photos anywhere and everywhere so that your following is big when it matters, regardless of what you paid her.


Or, look at it another way. Find a model with 10,000 tumblr followers and pay her to post 5 photos that you shoot of her. Don't pay her for the modeling, pay her for the posting. Since there's no logical way to determine the rate for the posting multiply the amount of time she spends at the shoot by an hourly rate.

MC Photo wrote:
What you'll be licensing is your following. Better to make sure shes posting your photos anywhere and everywhere so that your following is big when it matters, regardless of what you paid her.


Or, look at it another way. Find a model with 10,000 tumblr followers and pay her to post 5 photos that you shoot of her. Don't pay her for the modeling, pay her for the posting. Since there's no logical way to determine the rate for the posting multiply the amount of time she spends at the shoot by an hourly rate.

But again, how does this benefit YOU as a photographer? It is HER following who will see your pictures, not yours.

One photographer I know posted a bunch of pics from a session on her tumblr and one of them got hundreds of hits in a few hours while the rest just got barely 10 each at best. Because of this she thought that picture in particular was the best and most popular from the session and she made a huge print to sell it. Of course, it turned out that her picture had gotten a random reblog from someone who generates a lot of traffic, thus the other reblogs. That picture was not even one of the best from the session, it was actually among the worse and now she is stuck with a print of a crappy photo that she cannot sell.

Seriously, this obsession with views and reblogs and favs and retwits and shares and all that shit is dumb. People using the internetz as a spam maching in a never-ending race to see who makes more noise with their crap and turning this into a virtual dump.

4 R D wrote:

But again, how does this benefit YOU as a photographer? It is HER following who will see your pictures, not yours.

One photographer I know posted a bunch of pics from a session on her tumblr and one of them got hundreds of hits in a few hours while the rest just got barely 10 each at best. Because of this she thought that picture in particular was the best and most popular from the session and she made a huge print to sell it. Of course, it turned out that her picture had gotten a random reblog from someone who generates a lot of traffic, thus the other reblogs. That picture was not even one of the best from the session, it was actually among the worse and now she is stuck with a print of a crappy photo that she cannot sell.

Seriously, this obsession with views and reblogs and favs and retwits and shares and all that shit is dumb. People using the internetz as a spam maching in a never-ending race to see who makes more noise with their crap and turning this into a virtual dump.

If you can't figure that out on your own my explanation isn't going to help.

She can't sell the photo because no one knows who she is. The person who reblogged would have no problem selling it, other than the fact that no one buys prints in the first place.


It's the noise and virtual dump element that gives "curators" their power.  There will be so much crap, that people will only follow a select few and it's not going to be the few that no one has heard of it will be the known ones.


Who's better suited for the front cover of Vogue, a full-time, professional model with years of experience or a non-model? It's pretty obviously the model

So why is it that celebrities beat models out for the cover?


Who's going to get hired the best photographer or the best known photographer? Photos are used to get people to pay attention long enough to sell them something. If the photographer's name contributes to getting people to pay attention, then that's valuable to the client.

Documented, codified groups are extremely valuable. That's the entire premise behind Google and Facebook. Their business is licensing access to groups and that's what photography is going to evolve into.


Bands get signed when they've proven to labels that they can attract fans and sell records.

People seek photographers who can make photos that strike an emotional chord in the viewer. Clients will no longer need to speculate on whether a prospective photographer can do that. They will look at what they've done on their own. If you can't make a photo that gets 50,000 or 100,000 tumblr notes, how can you make a photo that will sell 1,000,000 magazines?

The volume of emails and books that photo editors receive from photographers is so overwhelming that they have to ignore it. They only way they can find someone new is to actually look for them. They'll do a few searches and the most known people will come up and that's going to be the people with the biggest followings.


This is what Napster could have been - it's digital word of mouth. No one trusts advertising, they trust their friends.

MC Photo wrote:
If you can't figure that out on your own my explanation isn't going to help.

She can't sell the photo because no one knows who she is. The person who reblogged would have no problem selling it, other than the fact that no one buys prints in the first place.


It's the noise and virtual dump element that gives "curators" their power.  There will be so much crap, that people will only follow a select few and it's not going to be the few that no one has heard of it will be the known ones.


Who's better suited for the front cover of Vogue, a full-time, professional model with years of experience or a non-model? It's pretty obviously the model

So why is it that celebrities beat models out for the cover?


Who's going to get hired the best photographer or the best known photographer? Photos are used to get people to pay attention long enough to sell them something. If the photographer's name contributes to getting people to pay attention, then that's valuable to the client.

Documented, codified groups are extremely valuable. That's the entire premise behind Google and Facebook. Their business is licensing access to groups and that's what photography is going to evolve into.


Bands get signed when they've proven to labels that they can attract fans and sell records.

People seek photographers who can make photos that strike an emotional chord in the viewer. Clients will no longer need to speculate on whether a prospective photographer can do that. They will look at what they've done on their own. If you can't make a photo that gets 50,000 or 100,000 tumblr notes, how can you make a photo that will sell 1,000,000 magazines?

The volume of emails and books that photo editors receive from photographers is so overwhelming that they have to ignore it. They only way they can find someone new is to actually look for them. They'll do a few searches and the most known people will come up and that's going to be the people with the biggest followings.


This is what Napster could have been - it's digital word of mouth. No one trusts advertising, they trust their friends.

The lesson behind my little story is how some photographers grossly overestimate the value of internet exposure and wrongly infer that such popularity is going to be translated to business success.

Getting page views and traffic means nothing of value, unless you are in the business of selling ads. You as a photographer need your work to be seen by potential clients: Editors, magazines, agencies and so on; not by random anonymous kids with too much time to waste on tumblr.

Paying a popular model or a view-whore to use your photo in her port is absurd. Here is my reasoning: If your work is stellar she will actually want to PAY YOU to have your picture in her port. If your work is on the same level, she will TRADE WITH YOU to have your picture in her port. But if your work is inferior then why would you even want to have your crap shown in the same port where either a) Everything else is clearly superior or b) There are loads of other equally crappy pictures. Either way, the comparisons will never benefit you.

The bottom line I want to get at is, if you are at a stage where you need to pay a model for her services then your work simply is not at a level where you should even be thinking about marketing strategies, good or bad ones. You want the exposure? Then make better pictures that will allow you to strike better deals, deals that actually benefit you.

Now, if you just want to make money out of a celebrity status then you do not even need to do photography. Surely there must be easier ways to become famous?

sublime LightWorks wrote:

Agree. I pay talent all the time and tell them up front I'm also giving them their choice of 8-10 images. Now I've never had a model demand images and payment when she has contacted me for a shoot, but I would consider it as with any 'rate' to be negotiable. Everything has a value, just factor that into the final agreed compensation.

And Ken, love your work.

Bob

good rule

Rules are meant to be broken

4 R D wrote:

The lesson behind my little story is how some photographers grossly overestimate the value of internet exposure and wrongly infer that such popularity is going to be translated to business success.

Getting page views and traffic means nothing of value, unless you are in the business of selling ads. You as a photographer need your work to be seen by potential clients: Editors, magazines, agencies and so on; not by random anonymous kids with too much time to waste on tumblr.

Paying a popular model or a view-whore to use your photo in her port is absurd. Here is my reasoning: If your work is stellar she will actually want to PAY YOU to have your picture in her port. If your work is on the same level, she will TRADE WITH YOU to have your picture in her port. But if your work is inferior then why would you even want to have your crap shown in the same port where either a) Everything else is clearly superior or b) There are loads of other equally crappy pictures. Either way, the comparisons will never benefit you.

The bottom line I want to get at is, if you are at a stage where you need to pay a model for her services then your work simply is not at a level where you should even be thinking about marketing strategies, good or bad ones. You want the exposure? Then make better pictures that will allow you to strike better deals, deals that actually benefit you.

Now, if you just want to make money out of a celebrity status then you do not even need to do photography. Surely there must be easier ways to become famous?

Internet exposure is worthless. That's not the same thing as having a following.

Exposure to every living person once, simultaneously is worth nothing. You need to have repeated exposure over and over consistently.

Excluding weddings and senior portraits, a photographer is a sales person. Photos are sales tools. If your work brings a following of people with it, people will hire you so that following sees what they are selling.

Call it celebrity or recognition or a following. It's how any business succeeds - by being known. The difference is we all have our own mass media platform, which we didn't have in the past.

Go back 20 years an think about the logistics of getting a photo seen by 1 million people.

Compare that with now. One click in lightroom can lead to that happening.

Assume that you can double your following every year. By the end of a 20 year career that's an enormous number of people who pay attention to your work. That gives you a ton of business options.

But the bigger issue is that everyone's following can now be documented. It will be faster for prospective clients to look at your numbers and compare them with someone else's and that's going to be the determining factor for major jobs. You may even get a client hire you to shoot a cover and then pay you to advertise it on you various platforms.

The best photos strike and emotional chord in the viewer. When that happens they share it. The photos that get shared may not be the best technically, but they are the best photos because they do what photos are supposed to do.

If you can't figure out how to shoot a photo that does that (which do I mean, provoke and emotional response or go viral?) how can you expect to successfully execute a paid job? That's what they are paying you to do.

So the easiest way to evaluate a photographer is by their track record of provoking an emotional response. For better or worse, that's easily documentable, so the business is going to adapt to that.

MC Photo wrote:

Internet exposure is worthless. That's not the same thing as having a following.

Exposure to every living person once, simultaneously is worth nothing. You need to have repeated exposure over and over consistently.

Excluding weddings and senior portraits, a photographer is a sales person. Photos are sales tools. If your work brings a following of people with it, people will hire you so that following sees what they are selling.

Call it celebrity or recognition or a following. It's how any business succeeds - by being known. The difference is we all have our own mass media platform, which we didn't have in the past.

Go back 20 years an think about the logistics of getting a photo seen by 1 million people.

Compare that with now. One click in lightroom can lead to that happening.

Assume that you can double your following every year. By the end of a 20 year career that's an enormous number of people who pay attention to your work. That gives you a ton of business options.

But the bigger issue is that everyone's following can now be documented. It will be faster for prospective clients to look at your numbers and compare them with someone else's and that's going to be the determining factor for major jobs. You may even get a client hire you to shoot a cover and then pay you to advertise it on you various platforms.

The best photos strike and emotional chord in the viewer. When that happens they share it. The photos that get shared may not be the best technically, but they are the best photos because they do what photos are supposed to do.

If you can't figure out how to shoot a photo that does that (which do I mean, provoke and emotional response or go viral?) how can you expect to successfully execute a paid job? That's what they are paying you to do.

So the easiest way to evaluate a photographer is by their track record of provoking an emotional response. For better or worse, that's easily documentable, so the business is going to adapt to that.

You just repeated what you said earlier without addressing the points I brought up.

And sorry, but I do not believe Vogue hires Terry Richardson because he is popular. If popularity and internet traffic were as critical as you claim, he would be the only one publishing. Do you really think agencies hire based on the amount of internet groupies you have? Please.

Ken Marcus Studios wrote:
I guess it depends on how nice a guy you want to be.

KM

Isn't there a saying about nice guys finishing ...lol

I don't know I give out images but then again they paid me for them. I didn't know it worked the other way around ;p

4 R D wrote:

You just repeated what you said earlier without addressing the points I brought up.

And sorry, but I do not believe Vogue hires Terry Richardson because he is popular. If popularity and internet traffic were as critical as you claim, he would be the only one publishing. Do you really think agencies hire based on the amount of internet groupies you have? Please.

Now, no, but that will shift over the next few years.

People who look at their fan base as Internet groupies are not going to succeed regardless of whether people look at those numbers. They are your audience. They are the people your work affects. They are the people who will abandon you when you're inconsiderate of them and leave you with a pile of unviewed work, which no one other than you and the person in it will care about.

Vogue does hire based in popularity. That's why they hire celebrities. Terry Richardson is not the only popular photographer. People would get bored if they used the same person over and over.

In the past the way to measure a celebrity's success, was box office numbers. It's different now and people will learn to analyze things this way.

If your plan is to treat 2015 and 2018 like 2011 and 2008, you're not going to work. The business and all business is constantly evolving.

Cameras are going to get better and better to the point where no technical skill is required. At that point what will editors base their hiring on?

When we have 100mp DSLRs, we'll be able to shoot everything wide and let the editor crop. Photography will be a job for an assistant unless who it is who shoots the photo matters. There won't be any technical difference in who shoots it.

MC Photo wrote:

Now, no, but that will shift over the next few years.

People who look at their fan base as Internet groupies are not going to succeed regardless of whether people look at those numbers. They are your audience. They are the people your work affects. They are the people who will abandon you when you're inconsiderate of them and leave you with a pile of unviewed work, which no one other than you and the person in it will care about.

Vogue does hire based in popularity. That's why they hire celebrities. Terry Richardson is not the only popular photographer. People would get bored if they used the same person over and over.

In the past the way to measure a celebrity's success, was box office numbers. It's different now and people will learn to analyze things this way.

If your plan is to treat 2015 and 2018 like 2011 and 2008, you're not going to work. The business and all business is constantly evolving.

Cameras are going to get better and better to the point where no technical skill is required. At that point what will editors base their hiring on?

When we have 100mp DSLRs, we'll be able to shoot everything wide and let the editor crop. Photography will be a job for an assistant unless who it is who shoots the photo matters. There won't be any technical difference in who shoots it.

yeah. right.

JAE Photography PA wrote:
Everything can be negotiated.  If a model demands full rates + images up front I wouldn't shoot with them.  I see images given after a paid shoot as a courtesy, not a requirement.  Unless there was another agreement agreed upon when setting up the shoot.

^^^ This.

I think, as with most such things, it comes down to clarity of communication before hand. I will do X, you will do Y, I will get A, you will get B.

My default position is whoever pays for the shoot (model, photographer or client) owns the results unless something else has been agreed with beforehand. So, if I'm hired for a shoot and I think there will be images I want for myself at the end of it, I make damn sure that's in the agreement if I can get it in there. (Although most paid work tends to be horribly dull stuff I don't want to keep!)

aaron lassman wrote:
I did a search and didn't see anything in the archives.  I find it hard to believe this topic hasn't come up before... or perhaps i didn't use the correct search terms. Or, if my wife is correct, my "man eyes" failed me again.

Anyway... I am throwing this out there because i'm at odds with this particular subject and would like some different perspectives. I have been contacted from time to time by a model soliciting me to pay her for a shoot then provide her images for her portfolio, which i am loath to do.  But on the other hand, i have contacted models, paid them AND given them images.  Of course, i've had the odd model or two want 20 or 30 edited images after i've already paid and given them a few.

But i'm curious as to how others manage this.  And i would love to hear from a model's perspective as well...  When you pay a model for a shoot (solicited by either party), do you provide images? If so, how many? Do you put conditions on their usage?

If it is a paid shoot, you have no obligation to reciprocate the model with images.

TFP and TFCD purpose is for mutual benefit of both parties' portfolios. Now, some photographers are generous and will work out compensation to where there is some pay, and the rest is made up with images. I think that is a happy medium when dealing with these situations.

Bottom line: Models should not expect images if they are being paid for the shoot, unless they need the tear sheets for their portfolio.